Birdcage
by yllw-drgnfly
Summary: "She remembered who she was and the game changed." SIOC-is-Kaguya-is-Sakura * a story about how to live and also how to manipulate chakra in the most terrifying of ways *


It is like drifting to the surface after being submerged in the ocean. My consciousness rocks gently in the waves of the waking world, sensation splashing over me like sea-spray and giving me the littlest jolt. My mind is hazy but I can just barely tell that I am in bed, swaddled in warm blankets that smell like flowers and grass and breezy summer winds. I do not want to wake, do not want to move or even breathe too harshly for fear of breaking this oddly sweet serenity.

It is a voice which whispers in my mind and rouses me.

" _This is the end, mother_ ," it shouts in a soft and ghostly way.

" _You've been too greedy_ ," calls another voice as familiar to me as my very own.

My breath hitches.

" _You wish for peace, but this is not the way_ …"

All three of them, their names are carved into my heart, etched into the layers of my mind, and my very being aches to hear their words. They repeat their accusations and curses, their hate, and it becomes a cacophony of dark noise that fills my ears with the sound of an angry ocean until…

" ** _Fear and Blood_** ," a new voice growls overtop the others.

My whole body jolts upwards into a sitting position in bed and I pant and gasp and cough, choking on nothing but the stale air in my lungs.

The world around me is a haze of shadow and light and I try to blink repeatedly to clear my vision even as my breath rattles and wheezes.

At first, I assume I am in my personal chambers within Tenji's palace, but then I remember that I killed him.

( _Murdered him in cold blood because he was annoying me_.)

I blink my eyes slowly and nudge that memory away.

Wondering now just where I am, I reach a hand up and shove my light-colored hair from my vision and cast my eyes about the room.

It is...strangely foreign to me.

Yes, I recognize the bed and the wardrobe and the desk and the night table, but beyond that—

'Wait,' my mind twitches, bringing forth a flurry of images, 'that's a lamp, and a notebook, and that's an electric fan…'

( _Electricity, glorious electricity_!)

My eyes are wide, I can tell, as I survey the room which bears so many out-of-place modern devices. I am awash in confusion, unable to connect the presence of such gadgets to the time period in which I've—

Huh?

A calendar catches my eye, but I cannot quite make out the date from where I sit in bed on the other side of the room. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and frown, a wrinkle developing in my brow.

My feet do not quite reach the ground.

I stare blankly at my very own tiny toes for quite a while, wriggling each one just to make sure that they are, indeed, mine.

A sense of deja vu washes over me.

( _I was younger then--more fearful and more naïve, but no less confused_.)

I have been here before, somehow--in this exact position, a lifetime and a half ago. I vaguely recall the sense of panic and fear and elation that accompanied this situation before.

Right now, I only feel tired--indescribably exhausted.

There are great swathes of memory missing from my life before this, but I know that I am dead ( _was dead_ ) and that I deserved it ( _deserved worse_ ). I question myself on the reasons behind letting a wretch such as I live again.

I have no answers to this.

Thus, I slide myself off of the bed and pad quietly up to the mirror, eyes squinting through the darkness for answers as to when and into whom I have been reborn. Judging by the calendar, it is the first week of April and the previous host of this body is to begin schooling within the next handful of days. I am quite young, then, I suppose, to be just now beginning my education. In this case, it will be difficult to adjust to a child's behaviour and I am likely to be questioned quite often for the discrepancies.

My gaze eases back to the mirror and I think it an illusion when I notice a pinkish hue tinting my undoubtedly silver-white hair. A flicker of something writhes against the farthest reaches of my subconscious, but I brush it aside in favor of studying my eyes. They are... perhaps a pale shade of spring green and I find that, in the low low light of the faraway street lamps seeping through the curtains, they are more enchanting than my previous pair of moonstone irises.

I approve of this new form, though I still do not know my own name or anything else about myself. I do not wish to arouse suspicion, so I decide not to rummage through my newfound possessions. Besides, I find my eyes are growing fairly heavy by the moment.

Rebirth is tiring, I suppose.

I climb back into bed and drift into peaceful slumber within minutes.


End file.
